Dad was looking brighter and more alert when we went in to see him yesterday afternoon. Physiotherapists reported that he had been more responsive when working with them in the morning, and that he had managed to sit up on the edge of his bed. During our visit, he was very animated: "talking" and responding quite a lot. Sadly, our lip reading skills are pretty hopeless and we were able to understand less than half of what he was saying to us. At one point, a nurse deflated the cuff of his tracheostomy tube so that we could sort of hear what he was trying to say, but the sound was indistinct and we were still only able to discern some of the words in his sentences. However, he was obviously able to hear us and respond, so we spoke with him and played some of his favourite hymns to him.
After sixteen hours without a problem, Dad began to have heart-stopping episodes again in the early evening. While it's not possible to say for certain, the general opinion seems to be that these episodes have been provoked by the amiodarine drug that he'd been getting earlier in the week. The cardiologist's report said that Dad could feel the effects of it for days or even weeks. A consultant came to us and told us, somewhat brutally, that none of the doctors thought that Dad could come out of the ICU alive, and that they expected he would probably die during the night. Of course, this was the second time this week that we were told to expect him to pass on in the night, so we decided not to wait in the hospital this time, but simply to go home and "wait and see."
We hadn't been home for long, when the night nurse phoned to say that Dad had had two more episodes and that their policy now was not to speak to him or do anything that would cause him to "come back" again. As a family, we were in agreement with this, so that my Dad could be able to "slip away" quietly, without struggling to resuscitate for a family member who was there beside him. My brother and I decided to drive up to the hospital one last time and say our goodbyes. Dad was asleep when we arrived, but woke up when he heard our voices. After chatting a bit with the nurse, Graham and I went over to see him again. We told him we loved him, and he nodded and responded to us. Then I told him that we knew he'd been putting up a brave fight and we understood that he was probably tired. (He nodded again.) I told him that we were here for him if he chose to keep fighting.... but that it was totally okay with us if he decided that he didn't want to fight any more and just wanted to go home and be with the Lord. We asked him if he understood, and he nodded again. So we said our goodbyes and goodnights, and headed home for the night. We knew that the nurse might phone us at any time in the night to give us news.
This morning, when I woke up, I looked at my clock, and realised that Dad had made it through another night. I phoned the hospital, as we've been doing every morning for the past three weeks, to find out how the night had been. The nurse told me that Dad had had about twenty more episodes during the night and, despite the fact that no efforts were made to resuscitate him, his heart started up again every time. There's a concern, though, that these episodes (his heart has now stopped and started nearly fifty times) could begin to cause him pain and distress, and so he's receiving morphine at the moment to keep him "comfortable."
It's incredibly hard to realise that a drug seems to be the culprit for these distressing episodes he's been having.... and yet we recognise that Dad is an old man who has been critically ill for three weeks now, and whose organs are still not totally recovered from the septic shock that ravaged his body after the surgeries. It's amazing to us that he has been able to keep rallying and fighting back..... but today seems to be one of those times where we can only watch and wait to see how much longer he can keep it up. Please would you pray for my family today, as we continue to wait and see what the outcome will be. Thank you.
